Zlata

She arrived at Koschmark with a bag over her shoulder and found three cold hearths. She has been tending them for thirty-one years. The fortress eats because Zlata ensures it eats. The bread rises because she arrives before dawn. The copper pots hang in the order she decided on her first morning, and no one has moved them since, because no one has needed to. The kitchen is hers. It has been hers since the first loaf.

Hands that have stopped working the way they once did. Thirty-one years of kneading, lifting, scrubbing. She does not complain. She adjusts.

Steady. Practical. She does not ask questions about the man on the throne because the man on the throne is not her concern. The bread is her concern. The hearths are her concern. Whether the fortress stands or falls, someone will need to eat.